Faderhead – Asteria

Welcome back to the world of Faderhead!

Release: October 4th, 2019
Label: Self-Release
Genre: EBM, Faderhead, Future Pop, Synth Pop
Discogs: Faderhead – Asteria

As the nights grow colder and the days short­er, Faderhead invites us once more to the dance floor and warms our hearts and bod­ies with his new album 'Asteria'. What can we expect two years after the release of 'Night Physics'? Actually, a little bit of everything. From the typ­ic­al Faderhead club beats along with slower, heav­ier themes to melod­ic voice ele­ments and bal­lad-like tracks: every­one gets his share.

On 'Asteria', Faderhead once again excels at com­bin­ing harsh club beats and melod­ic elec­tron­ic bal­lads. As on the pre­vi­ous albums, Sami’s voice doesn’t seem to know any bound­ar­ies: Soothing and melod­ic in 'Dancing All Alone', scream­ing along to the in-your-face beats of 'Slowly We Inch' or tak­ing on a dirty rough touch in 'Acid Witch'.

'How do you overcome the suffering of life?'

The album starts off with a blast and I'm not only refer­ring to the music but also the lyr­ics intro­du­cing some of the main themes of the album. 'From His Broken Bones' reminds us that we should turn away from a tech­no­crat­ic, 'exo­gen­ic' way of life in order to recol­lect ourselves and begin to dream again.

'The Other Side Of Doom' takes up the same theme from the first song and paints the pic­ture of a hol­low world with no soul. The quite min­im­al­ist­ic elec­tron­ic ele­ments abruptly slow you down, build­ing up to a power­ful chor­us, where we are being screamed at by Sami's rough and dis­tor­ted voice, which is a nice con­trast to the melod­ic vocals in the verses.

You can­not have one hun­dred per­cent secur­ity and one hun­dred per­cent pri­vacy with zero inconvenience
Lyrics from 'Watching The Watchers' by Faderhead

Listening to the lyr­ics of 'Watching The Watchers', I was quite sur­prised about the clear ref­er­ence to cur­rent devel­op­ments in sur­veil­lance policy, where inform­a­tion tech­no­logy is used to scan our every move online and off­line under dubi­ous pre­tenses. The melod­ic vocals respond­ing to the repeated voice record­ing sound almost sad and des­per­ate, under­lin­ing the lyr­ics hint­ing at death as the sole solu­tion to evade Big Brother watch­ing our every step.

After the dreamy elec­tron­ic ele­ments from 'Watching The Watchers', 'With A Borrowed Knife' takes on an even slower and heav­ier rhythm. The min­im­al­ist­ic syn­thes­izer ele­ments along with a mono­ton­ous pound­ing sound fit per­fectly with the gloomy scenery depic­ted in the lyrics.

Watching back from the other side

Unlike the pre­vi­ous songs, 'Acid Witch' does not offer a lot of lyr­ics, but the EBM beats make up for it and awake us from the dark and gloomy thoughts the pre­vi­ous songs left us with. Sami’s rough voice echo­ing along to the beats is almost like a con­tinu­ing invit­a­tion to dance away all dark thoughts.

Interestingly, 'Slowly We Inch' is a clear sequel to 'Watching The Watchers' tak­ing up the same lines, only now with a lot more rage:

These are times where severed heads prevail
Lyrics from 'Slowly We Inch' by Faderhead

Once again, the verses are sung with a more melod­ic voice, where­as Sami switches to a rough­er and harder tone in the chor­us. It's almost as if he's scream­ing away all des­pair and frus­tra­tion. The last part of the song takes on a heav­ier and slower pace, as if to under­line that we are slowly mov­ing toward the abyss.

The dark and somber scenery is fur­ther con­tin­ued in the club song 'Murder', which seems to intro­duce us to the tran­scend­ent­al exper­i­ence of death. Sami’s dark voice softly singing 'Murder' along to the dark­wave ele­ments is almost sooth­ing in spite of the ser­i­ous­ness of the topic.

Your scars are maps of who you are
Like tat­toos you did not choose
Lyrics from 'Murder' by Faderhead

'Asteria' begins on a slow pace, but quickly regains in speed, vary­ing softer ele­ments in the verses and more power­ful beats in the chor­us. As the last seconds of the song slowly fade away, you can hear a cer­tain sad­ness in the vocals as if, sud­denly, death almost soun­ded promising.

'Mistakes And Pain' is delivered in a very slow and pon­der­ing rhythm and feels like a pause. Although this is the song I liked the least on this album, I still find it inter­est­ing how the voice is being muffled as if Sami was singing underwater.

Dancer in the dark

Luckily, 'Neophobiac' marks a clear cut to the pre­vi­ous song and gets you back on your feet. Sami is just spit­ting out the very short lines along to the elab­or­ate club beats. This track actu­ally reminds me of Faderhead's earli­er works and in my opin­ion this is what he does best.

If you still haven’t moved until now, now is the per­fect time to do so! 'Halo' takes on the same theme from 'Neophobiac' and you can't help but move your body to the harsh stomp beats and trance ele­ments.

Every girl car­ries a circle of hell around her head like a halo
Lyrics from 'Halo' by Faderhead

With 'The Bottom', it's time to take a break again and 'bring the shad­ow back inside'. This track reminds me of the oth­er slower tracks on this album with its very slow pace and heavy basses. It's almost as if this song pre­pares us for the end to come.

'Dancing All Alone' is a nice and smooth clos­ing to this album. Although the song is delivered on a faster pace, the trance-like ele­ments cre­ate a dreamy atmo­sphere, as if we were watch­ing a woman dan­cing in the dark, all alone, far from the dan­cing crowd.

For dark minds

'Asteria' takes us right back into the world of Faderhead and does not leave any expect­a­tions unful­filled. Those who sup­port Faderhead on Patreon know that Sami put a lot of thought and energy in this album and it was def­in­itely worth it.  Although the new album does not hold any sur­prises and some of the slower tracks are not really my cup of tea, 'Asteria' is a must have for long-time fans and new­comers to Faderhead's style.

In addi­tion to the album itself, the beau­ti­ful album art­work needs to be acknow­ledged. The sym­bols of the moon and the tri­angle seem to be hint­ing at the album cov­ers from 'Night Physics' and 'Fh‑X'. The well-bal­anced mix of up-tempo and slower tracks does indeed form a per­fect sequel to the pre­vi­ous albums.

Let’s hope no one will be 'dan­cing alone' because this is an album made for dark clubs and, hope­fully, burst­ing con­cert halls!

By the way, this album also made it into our art­icle ‘The best Synth Pop and genre-related albums 2019‘. Read now.

Track By Track Rating

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